Cartoon strikes down 600 Japanese kids

According to the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), 155 people, mainly children, had been kept in hospital across the country for further treatment.Police started questioning television officials and said they have not yet decided whether the case should be handled as one of unintentionally inflicting injury.

The TV Tokyo network, which aired the 30-minute programme, said it has reported the case to the Post and Telecommunications Ministry which licenses broadcasters. “The network will examine the programme before deciding whether it should continue broadcasting the animation,” a network spokesman said.

The children momentarily lost their vision or suffered convulsions after seeing Pikachu, one of the Pokemon characters, flash its eyes on television, ministry officials said. In one of the most striking scenes towards the end of the programme, animated characters crept into a broken computer and fought villains amid bright flashing lights.

Nintendo, which originated the Pokemon characters for its video game software, said it was not to blame and criticised the network for the way it aired the cartoon.

“Pokemon is displayed on a black and white screen on our game equipment and it has nothing to do with the TV Tokyo programme,” Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi said. “This situation is the problem of TV Tokyo’s way of producing (the cartoon programme),” he added.

The Pocket Monster software for the portable screen game has become a smash hit, selling some 7.5 million units since February last year and generating sales of character merchandise.

The programme has been broadcasted every Tuesday evening on 37 stations affiliated with the TV Tokyo network since April with viewing rates averaging more than 17 per cent.

Psychologists said the phenomenon might be an epileptic effect induced by flashing light known as photosensitive epilepsy or group hysteria.

Cases of photosensitive epilepsy among children playing Japanese-made TV games have been reported in Japan, United States and United Kingdom.

“Given that they collapsed with their eyes irritated, there is the possibility of photosensitive epilepsy or group hysterics,” said psychologist Rika Kayama, the author of a book on video games and health.

She said group hysterics usually occur in a group as the name suggests. But people watching a highly evocative TV programme like Pokemon at separate locations could develop group hysterics. “Anyway, the children must have been totally immersed in the programme,” Kyodo quoted her as saying. Other psychologists told Jiji Press that the symptoms were probably caused by the combination of a sudden flash and flickering of lights.